Wednesday, March 21, 2007

David Cameron's Budget Reply

Seeing as the BBC cut the coverage of David Cameron's speech here are a few extracts, courtesy of PA.

"You have finally given us a tax cut. You normally do that before a General Election but you are in such a deep hole you have had to do it before the leadership election... You can increase spending and you can cut taxes. Yes, you can share the proceeds of growth... It is a bit like Stalin. They are cheering him on now, he'll wipe them out later... Your great experiment in tax and spending has failed. You are an out of date politician wedded to state control. The question everyone is asking is where has the money gone?... You are the Chancellor who has put the tax burden up. You are the Chancellor who has taken one tax down but put 99 taxes up. The average family is paying £1,300 more because of your Budget decisions. I have to say we will check carefully what is happening to the aligning of national insurance because we think it might be hitting middle-income families...

Let me tell you what the Chancellor's real problem is, it is not that he is a Stalinist who holds all his colleagues in contempt - although I have to say that probably doesn't help, it is that he has wasted money on an industrial scale... For 10 years you have been telling us that education is your priority ... but 40% of primary school leavers can't read properly. For 10 years you have been telling us you want a competitive economy but you have given us the biggest tax burden in our history. For 10 years you have been talking about child poverty - you did it again today - but the number of people living in severe poverty is up by 400,000 and Unicef say that Britain is the worst place in the developed world to bring up children. For 10 years you have been telling us about the NHS, today barely a mention. All you have done isre-announce this year's money which we already knew. You have got the figuresfor the future - why won't you tell us?

Let's look at what was in the Budget but didn't get a mention in the speech, that's always an important list. Soon the Chancellor and his allies, they will be going round the country and saying the spin, the distortions, the half-truths of the Blair era are coming to an end. Some of them have started already but actually with you spin will get worse. We've had a bonanza of spending on the NHS but nurses have been sacked. He brags about people's long term security but the pension system's shot to pieces... There are 160,000 people who only keep 10p out of every extra pound they earn. At least the last time we had a 90% marginal tax rate it was the richest thatpaid - it's now the poorest.

As Mr Brown and the Prime Minister talked on the front bench, Mr Cameron said "they are having their annual conversation". In a reference to Mr Blair's appearance on Comic Relief with Catherine Tate, he added: "I don't know why he bothers talking to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister's not bovvered anymore." He said the Labour Party were "just realising their next leader has the tendencies of Stalin and the poll ratings of Michael Foot." He added: "The front bench are all standing in the deputy leadership contest, they know from history that's the one way to avoid the Gulag."On Mr Brown he said: "For years he wanted to be the young pretender and now he's ended up as the old man in the Kremlin."

His jibes were met by Mr Brown with a dour expression and folded arms, prompting Mr Cameron to joke about his reported dental treatment and recent meetings with celebrities."He has spent all that money on his smile, but he won't even throw us one. He won't win over Kylie like that."

Some good laughs raised by Cameron. I think he fluffed his timing over Miliband, tho'.

Another thwack for small businesses. Utter scumbag that Brown. First he steals the 0% rating below 50k, thus a double hit as fledgling companies need to spend more energy and cost PAYING tax, then he raises it. He will not be content when the country is either all on handouts or ultra-rich "Fifth Sector" parasites living off Government contracts.

p.s. did anyone else notice how Reid appeared have a thrombo over Cameron's "Power Station in Siberia" jab, continuing to trade words with various Conservatives? More sport there, I suspect.

The more I think about this it is the end for Brown. Every backbencher loves the 2p cut stunt and cheers like mad. Tomorrow they wil realise that they would rather have had that before the next election. It shows how the NuLab are shot.

Brown is a complete and utter charlatan. His proposed 2p reduction in income tax thrown in with a theatrical flourish at the end is blatant political headline grabbing designed to endear him to the media and the voters and to enhance his career ambitions.

Look at the details however, and you see clearly that most, particularly the lower paid, will end up worse off.

Brown is a spiv of the lowest kind and patently unfit to be Prime Minister.

"Brown is a complete and utter charlatan. His proposed 2p reduction in income tax thrown in with a theatrical flourish at the end is blatant political headline grabbing designed to endear him to the media and the voters and to enhance his career ambitions."

Exactly. This is what we call "politics". But it has put Cameron on the backfoot.

Bloody hell good isn`t he . I have always thought vey highly of Cameron although on Policy I am sometimes dubious, often in fact .

As a peroformer though I really think he can be one of the Greats . An inspirational leader we do not deserve him and he scores here with every word. Gordon Brown is like a lot of people that have hidden in obscurity . He us far less cleverthan either he or anyone else thinks he is and he could not be better for us

When was the last time a change in the basic rate of income tax did not take effect for the next tax year? jam the day after tomorrow. Don't you pity the next Chancellor with so many 'decisions' pre-announced for the next four years

The 2% reduction in corporation tax for big businesses was more than offset by reducing the rate of capital allowances from 25% to 20%. The rate cut would cost the treasury about £3.5 billion. The capital allowances rate cut will save them about £4 billion, and will penalise capital intensive industrial companies to the benefit of advertising, nsulting firms and lobbyists.

Is this the same BBC that majored on a John Simpson story last night about the government massaging intelligence in the run-up to the war? The only major media organisation still bravely banging this drum?

And the same BBC that cheerfully showed pictures of Brown morphing into Stalin in last night's Ten O'Clock news?

And, shortly afterwards, showed the father of a dead soldier movingly asking how Blair sleeps at night?

They cut him off and went to the studio.As far as the BBC goes I would like to see it broken up.This won't happen as it's too usefull as a unifying/propaganda force for the government in power.The Conservatives won't/can't admit they were de-branded.The only solution is partial broadcasting (which declares itself as such).Otherwise the Lefties in the editing suites will keep pushing the bias boundaries ever further.

Cameron needs to stick to his day job. those of us who arent blinded by his pearly grin can see through his jibes. when the opposition use personal attacks instead of intelligently addressing the matter in hand, the public arent impressed.

we dont need to see him trying to get a rise out of the chancllor with playground insults, we want to see a real debate about the economy. David Cameron is turning the Chamber into a bigger circus than Blair ever did.

Cheap insults wont cover up bad policy making and lack of direction for long. it was a pathetic excuse for a response to a budget.

Cameron wiped the floor with Brown who once again showed himself to be a shameless liar and a neurotic attention-seeking oddball.

Brown's attempted con-trick with his headline grabbing 2p cut at some time in the future has already been spotted and will rebound on him. Most people, and particularly the lower paid will end up worse off. You can fool some of the people etc...

Brown's "report" on the economy was a litany of shameless lies as usual, with no mention of the massive debt soon to cripple the economy, the collapse in savings, black hole in state pension funding, and collapse in productivity.

This worst of all Chancellors has mortgaged the country's future and the consequences will be recession/depression/stagflation and a massive lowering of living standards while many other countries thrive.

Cameron wiped the floor with him but was censored half way through by the BBC of course.

Overall, Brown will come out badly from this as his dishonest attempt to court popularity is exposed as lies.

He may or may not take over from Blair but he certainly won't win the next election or even come close.

I thought David Cameron's response to the Budget was absolutely brilliant. I can't understand why the BBC, who censored it, keep telling listeners and viewers who weren't allowed to see it that he was unable to counter the master strategist Gordon Brown. In my opinion he wiped the floor with Gordon.Sky, who are taking the same propagandist line as the BBC have just had David Blunket on to give his entirely predictable opinion of Cameron. I'm glad to conclujde from this that Dave hasn't sold out to Murdoch.

pollbitch, dont you mean stick to his day lounging around on welfare doing arse all apologising for slavery.......I hope unemployment goes to 2 million under the tories. Thats how many left wing, worksy, sandal wearing apologists we need to sack to get the country going.

Th ereference to Michael Foot did more damage than anything e;se said. So unpopular that Foot springs to mind. the NuLab backbenchers can take that back to the constituency and prepare for welfare!!

Not being a great fan of Cameron, because of his daft 'environmentalism' stance, I was though impressed by his response to the Brun. Brun's taxing the poor really takes NuLabour's cynicism to new heights.

allan 3.18 PM: You ask, "Am I the only one who thinks that responding to the Budget is fairly serious, and not really a time for funnies?"

I agree it's serious and I think a statesmanlike leader of the opposition would say, "I am not going to respond to these very detailed proposals today. I shall give a considered response later in the week."

But I suppose in the world of soundbites which we now inhabit this would be thought preposterous. Eminiently sensible, but preposterous.

wallscametumblingdown, my point wasnt about the budget, about whether Gordon Brown was right or wrong, it was about using a serious debate to throw around puerile insults and yet again harp on about Gordon's popularity and not the actual matter in hand. Cameron isnt reaching out to the disengaged with jokes about Kylie, what he's doing is just underlining with every jibe why people dislike politics and are becoming more and more disillusioned with it. people want their leaders running the country, not acting like schoolboys in the playground. Tory or Labour, whatever your persuasion, people want to see politicians being politicians, not headline grubbing media tarts.

From the tone of your retort to my comments, i'm guessing you adopt Cameron's style when confronted with intelligent argument, so I understand why you are a Cameron sympathiser and so very impressed with his performance yesterday.

Pollbitch overlooks the difficulty any Leader of th opposition has in giving an immediate response to a detailed Budget statement. He has very little notice to prepare and virtually no notice of what rabbits (or frauds) like the 2p headline reduction in basic rate tax, the Chancellor is going to pull out of the hat - at the very last minute.So dont dump on Cameron for drawing the nation's attention to some of the things Gordon Brown didn't want to talk about e.g.massive private & public debt levels,plommeting savings,falling competitiveness and the highest rate of RPI inflation since 1991.Brown has taxed, taxed and taxed again - just as you would expect of any average Labour Chancellor.But he has wasted a golden legacy which stemmed from the real reforms which the Conservatives put through in the teeth of Labour opposition in the 1980s and 1990s:labour markets and Big Bang to the financial markets in 1988.